World Lab: Inventing the Future Today

April 23, 2012
James A. Landay | University of Washington

There are many urgent problems facing the planet: a degrading environment, a healthcare system in crisis, and educational systems that are inadequately training creative, innovative thinkers to solve the problems of tomorrow. A balanced approach is required to solve these problems: a balance between design and technology, a balance between human-centered and technology-centered approaches, a balance between government policy and individual behavior change, and a balance between different world cultures and ways of thinking. What if we could reduce a family’s energy and water use by 50%? What if we could double everyone’s daily physical activity? What if we could educate any child, anywhere in the world, to perform near the level of the best students in the world today, while ensuring these children excel at innovative thinking? A research program that tackles these grand challenges must include a new model of interdisciplinary research that takes a long view and encourages risk taking and creativity, while not being distracted by the incremental approaches that are encouraged by today’s funding and publication models. A truly interdisciplinary institute can both attack the most important problems the world faces today as well as help produce the research leaders of tomorrow.

Speaker Details

James Landay is the Short-Dooley Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, specializing in human-computer interaction. He is also the co-founder of the dub group at the University of Washington. From 2003 through 2006 he was also the Laboratory Director of Intel Labs Seattle, a university affiliated research lab exploring ubiquitous computing. His current research interests include Technology to Support Behavior Change, Demonstrational Interfaces, Mobile & Ubiquitous Computing, and User Interface Design Tools. He spent his 2009-2011 sabbatical at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, where he was also a Visiting Professor in the Computer Science Department of Tsinghua University.

Landay received his BS in EECS from UC Berkeley in 1990 and MS and PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993 and 1996, respectively. His PhD dissertation was the first to demonstrate the use of sketching in user interface design tools. He was also the chief scientist and co-founder of NetRaker. In 1997 he joined the faculty in EECS at UC Berkeley, leaving as an Associate Professor in 2003. He was named to the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2011. He currently serves on the NSF Engineering CISE Advisory Board. More information can be found at https://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/landay or by following landay on Twitter.